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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) used his keynote address to the Maricopa County Republican Party Lincoln Day lunch to blast President Obama as wanting to weaken the U.S. Constitution. He vowed to restore the governing framework to its place of protecting every human life.
Santorum used the recent comments by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as evidence that liberals like Obama want to work to diminish the Constitution with executive decisions like the recent recess appointments. Ginsburg made a few waves when she gave an interview to Egyptian TV and noted ththat the recently-written South Africa constitution and other post-WWII efforts might be better models for the Egyptian people than the United States Constitution.
With a leading Republican presidential contender highlighting the remarks and extending them to the President, Justice Ginsburg's remarks are sure to get more attention. Here is the entire interview:
In addition, here are a few selected transcript clips from memri.org. I have watched most of the interview now, and Justice Ginsburg spends several minutes praising the U.S. Constitution (approximately 4:30 in the video through 9:30). She specifically talks about many of the aspects that she believes make our government so powerful and durable.
At the 9:30 mark, the interviewer asks her what models the Egyptian people might want to use for their own constitution, which is where she notes that newer constitutions have engrained the human rights aspects in a way that is preferable to the U.S. model that was written in a different day and age and which has been added on by amendments, laws and interpretations.
Justice Ginsburg, at this stage in her career, is much more soft-spoken than she was in the past. Yet, I suspect that if Sen. Santorum actually took 15 minutes to watch the video (http://bit.ly/wJU0sd), he would drop this line of attack on her. (If not the President.)
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